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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25475914">Until the Mockingjay Sings</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/deeplyshallow/pseuds/deeplyshallow'>deeplyshallow</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes - Fandom</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 12:13:35</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,026</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25475914</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/deeplyshallow/pseuds/deeplyshallow</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Lucy Gray Baird is gone.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>mentions of Coriolanus Snow/Lucy Gray Baird</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>86</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Until the Mockingjay Sings</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This book gave me feelings. I wanted to explore them here.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Lucy Gray Baird is gone. </p><p>Maud Ivory waits for any sign for months, long after everyone else has given up, long after the news comes that her fancy Capitol boy has returned to favour without a glance back at 12, long after the electric fences are put up so they can no longer go to the lake, to the meadow, long after they are told they cannot even sing. She waits all through that long winter, when they no longer have a way to earn money, where every time they try to eat they risk a beating, because she can’t have left them like this she just can’t. </p><p>It’s only when the screens are put up in the central square the following year and the announcement goes out that it’s mandatory to watch the Hunger Games (the concept is so foreign, last year they had to call in all their favours just to find a TV to check on Lucy Gray), that it sinks in. There is no way that Lucy Gray would not have come back to fight such an injustice.</p><p>She’s gone, she’s not coming back, but even so Maud Ivory cannot believe that they mayor had murdered her, not after she was so much cleverer than him, not after he had failed so spectacularly last time. Maybe she ran, maybe she’s living the good life, singing to her heart’s content, she’d like that.<br/>
Maybe it doesn’t really matter anymore.</p><p>Lucy Gray Baird disappeared into the mist and the only sign she existed are her melodies in the mockingjays’ songs, like fading footprints in the snow.</p><p>***</p><p>Lucy Gray Baird.</p><p>She’s heard her name read out at the reaping ever year. For as long as she can remember she’s always known there was another female victor from 12, but it only really mattered after she won. Suddenly she finds it's a strange fascination, someone she's desperate to know more about. </p><p>Haymitch is no help when she asks, "Before my time," he says, "some of us had to survive without mentors, sweetheart." </p><p>She spends several weeks scouring for footage of the 10th Games on TV, but there is none. It's not surprising really, from the little she can gather the first few games were simple, held in an old theatre in the Capitol and are a bit of an embarrassment compared to the spectacle they are today.</p><p>She has a little more luck from Greasy Sae and a few of the other oldies in the Hob. Their memories are faded, apologetic, it was back when watching wasn’t mandatory and most of them didn’t have a TV anyway, but they prove the girl was more than just a name.</p><p>“She was a singer, one of the Covey… she used to perform here sometimes… she had a beautiful voice…”</p><p>“…I barely knew she’d won, I’m not sure I saw her after she got reaped anyway… she was gone soon after, heard rumours it was some criminal stuff… but then the Covey all were gone not that long after…”</p><p>"I heard it was murder... the mayor back then was like a peacekeeper, corrupt and awful... and he hated her..." </p><p>Her father always spoke so warmly of the Covey, of the songs they used to perform in secret even after they were banned from the Hob, of how listening made being in the Seam feel like they were attending the finest concert. </p><p>Until they were all bundled away - never to return - by peacekeepers claiming they weren’t true residents of District 12, soon after President Snow took power.</p><p>She thinks about her more than she likes to admit, even though she knows a girl from the past can offer no guidance. She wonders if she felt the same as she did, all those years ago. Did she go to the Captiol thinking it was a death sentence? Who did she have to turn into to fight? How did it feel to go back to District 12 forever changed?</p><p>Did she think, even for a minute, when she was the only one left in the arena, that she had won?</p><p>But she’ll never know, because Lucy Gray Baird, like the rest of her people, is gone.</p><p>***</p><p>Lucy Gray Baird is not gone. She never has been. She’s everywhere in Panem, she’s in the show that is the Hunger Games, her rainbow dress is a part of the elaborate costumes, it was down to her stunning performance that they still have interviews. The memory of her pitiful songs at a cage in the Capitol Zoo are the reason that the tributes are healthy enough to fight.</p><p>In a way she’s the reason the Hunger Games, that she so wished would end, have survived. If he’s honest, she’s the reason he’s president at all.</p><p>Despite this, he hasn’t thought of her for years, not really. She was a foolish childhood mistake, one he’s grateful that he stopped himself from making just in time. He used to wake up in a cold sweat sometimes imagining how much she would have ruined had he gone along with her foolish plan.</p><p>But any danger she possessed had gone, gone with her body the day by the lake, gone with any knowledge of his guilt, gone like the rest of the Covey who he feared might have had an inkling of what he’d done.</p><p>Or so he had thought.</p><p>But here she is, advancing towards him from beyond the grave, her thoughts of revolution still in her damn district, the fire in her eyes blazing through the Capitol’s ceremonies, lighting their torches as they move from district to district, ever closer. </p><p>And the mockingjays, that he had tried so hard to get rid of are louder, stronger and more dangerous than ever; her words, lyrics he was so sure would have been forgotten, springing forth from their lips. </p><p>Lucy Gray Baird has not been seen for six and a half decades, but every day she is more present, and all he can hear are her words, as clear as the day she uttered them, <i> “Well, you know what they say. The show’s not over until the mockingjay sings.”</i> </p>
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